3 ms·

Beyond buying some Bitcoin and Ethereum, is there anything else a prospective investor should do?

by pdog 9y ago

knowaveragejoe 9y ago
Tokens in organizations that you think may succeed? I'm not particularly clear on details, i.e. how would you know whether a company is succeeding vs. just being a speculator's toy.
- vernon99 9y ago
  Ideally the organization itself should: a) be fully built on distributed technologies, if that's not the case, this is a clear red flag as it gives too much control to the founders to screw it. Ether+Web3.js+IPFS is a good combo. Proper voting/execution system for members is also a must IMO but very few actually have it. b) have a clear incentives model in place (built in smart contracts which code you should be able to inspect), meaning both initial users/contributors get increased value from participating and long-term growth can be achieved. c) solve a real problem, obviously. There're some existing models that can be disrupted as well as some of the more futuristic things like prediction markets, distributed clouds, etc. All of that should be explained in their whitepaper. That said, we're in a sort of 1999 situation right now so expect it to correct short-term. Also there's a lot of scammy projects now, so do your due diligence.
  - mbrock 9y ago
    It's very easy to make a "whitepaper" about solving some important problem using Ethereum/Web3/IPFS with whatever interesting kinds of voting schemes and incentives. Whitepapers of all kinds are basically designed to seem impressive and downplay problems, just like any other promotional material. Deciding whether the organization behind that whitepaper is legit, competent, and serious enough to actually make it happen is much more difficult than ticking some bullet points. Front end development is hard to do well, cryptoeconomic mechanism design is really difficult and prone to horrible failure, marketing is hard, profit is hard, etc etc. (As an aside, I'm curious how many people actually understand how IPFS works. Are we all clear that it's not a magic place where you can upload things to make them available everywhere forever? In most important aspects it's equivalent to BitTorrent with Magnet. You still need to seed!) That all said, in the sense of the "Keynesian beauty contest" it doesn't really matter whether a team will actually deliver anything good. If the web presence and whitepaper hype is cool enough to generate a good buzz, that's enough to generate a speculative wave where you hopefully won't be part of the crash!
    - livestyle 9y ago
      It's also "very easy" not fall into FOMO token buying.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
to3m 9y ago
Buy some Litecoin, of course.
aqsheehy 9y ago
Have knowledge asynchronous from the market. If you're asking here you don't, so don't trade.
- pdog 9y ago
  Do you invest in the stock market? Do you have "asynchronous" knowledge that the market doesn't know about?
  - aqsheehy 9y ago
    Nope I'm stupid
Temasik 9y ago
Buy xrp
eigenvalue 9y ago
The best alt coins in my view are SiaCoin, Golem, and Steem.

Beyond buying some Bitcoin and Ethereum, is there anything else a prospective investor should do?

by pdog 9y ago

Beyond buying some Bitcoin and Ethereum, is there anything else a prospective investor should do?

Tokens in organizations that you think may succeed? I'm not particularly clear on details, i.e. how would you know whether a company is succeeding vs. just being a speculator's toy.

vernon99 9y ago
Ideally the organization itself should: a) be fully built on distributed technologies, if that's not the case, this is a clear red flag as it gives too much control to the founders to screw it. Ether+Web3.js+IPFS is a good combo. Proper voting/execution system for members is also a must IMO but very few actually have it. b) have a clear incentives model in place (built in smart contracts which code you should be able to inspect), meaning both initial users/contributors get increased value from participating and long-term growth can be achieved. c) solve a real problem, obviously. There're some existing models that can be disrupted as well as some of the more futuristic things like prediction markets, distributed clouds, etc. All of that should be explained in their whitepaper. That said, we're in a sort of 1999 situation right now so expect it to correct short-term. Also there's a lot of scammy projects now, so do your due diligence.
- mbrock 9y ago
  It's very easy to make a "whitepaper" about solving some important problem using Ethereum/Web3/IPFS with whatever interesting kinds of voting schemes and incentives. Whitepapers of all kinds are basically designed to seem impressive and downplay problems, just like any other promotional material. Deciding whether the organization behind that whitepaper is legit, competent, and serious enough to actually make it happen is much more difficult than ticking some bullet points. Front end development is hard to do well, cryptoeconomic mechanism design is really difficult and prone to horrible failure, marketing is hard, profit is hard, etc etc. (As an aside, I'm curious how many people actually understand how IPFS works. Are we all clear that it's not a magic place where you can upload things to make them available everywhere forever? In most important aspects it's equivalent to BitTorrent with Magnet. You still need to seed!) That all said, in the sense of the "Keynesian beauty contest" it doesn't really matter whether a team will actually deliver anything good. If the web presence and whitepaper hype is cool enough to generate a good buzz, that's enough to generate a speculative wave where you hopefully won't be part of the crash!
  - livestyle 9y ago
    It's also "very easy" not fall into FOMO token buying.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

to3m 9y ago

Buy some Litecoin, of course.

aqsheehy 9y ago

Have knowledge asynchronous from the market. If you're asking here you don't, so don't trade.

pdog 9y ago
Do you invest in the stock market? Do you have "asynchronous" knowledge that the market doesn't know about?
- aqsheehy 9y ago
  Nope I'm stupid

Temasik 9y ago

Buy xrp

eigenvalue 9y ago

The best alt coins in my view are SiaCoin, Golem, and Steem.